A long way from visualisation

OKAY, quiz question - name the venue. The clues

OKAY, quiz question - name the venue. The clues. It staged a rally by the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart, bless 'em, in 1959; Cassius Clay played handball there in 1972 - and this might throw you off - Sligo reached an All-Ireland semi-final there in 1922.

Neil Diamond sang Song, Song, Blue and Joe McDonagh gave us a couple of verses of his hit, The West's Awake, there in the eighties. Tony Gregory TD had two memorable victories on its hallowed turf in his youth - first winning an egg-and-spoon race and later triumphing in a fancy-dress competition . . . em, decked out as a bishop. Still stuck?

My Ma sang Happy Days Are Here Again with the Cork contingent when they thought they were about to beat Kilkenny in a hurling final there in the seventies . . . only to lose to that "bloody shower of wasps", yet again.

My Da nearly fell off the top deck of the Cusack Stand when Anthony Molloy raised the Sam Maguire there for Donegal in 1992 (after a fortuitous victory over an infinitely superior Dublin team).

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"Boom, boom, boom, let me hear you say Jayo," sang an emotional Dublin County Committee there, allegedly, in 1995 when Jason Sherlock helped Dublin to their first All-Ireland victory in 12 years. ("Spit on me Jayo," they probably all cried.)

No joy? Well, if you'd tuned in to RTE's The History Of Croke Park on Wednesday you would have got the answer half ban hour ago. The documentary, narrated by Mick Dunne, lasted an hour but, judging by the quality of the archive footage (including that spooky 1922 football semi-final appearance by Sligo), the channel should have made a 12-part series out of it.

Croke Park, we learned, began life as an orchard but, by the I930s, turnstile operator Bill Swan was having to deal with one very unruly, eh, Granny Smith, who was eager to gain (free) admission to the home of Gaelic Games in Ireland.

"There was an old lady who, when she used to come through the stiles, she'd do this with her finger (pointing behind her) her husband was paying for her. But then the `husband' would come in and he'd say `She's not with me' and there'd be a hullabaloo ... but by then the Mrs would be gone," complained Bill. (We warned you you'd be spotted, Great Aunt Florrie).

While Great Aunt Florrie escaped arrest in the 1930s, the finalists in the 1946 hurling final probably came close to being charged with possession of dangerous weapons by Eamonn O'Doherty, future Garda Commissioner, but, back then, on duty on his first visit to Croke Park. "It was the first occasion that I had seen a hurling match, because in Buncrana and Innisowen, where I came from, there was no hurling at all," he said.

Half a century on, Donegal hurling is on the up and up ("We beat Fermanagh you know" one native boasted recently), although one suspects the lumpy nature of the terrain in the north-west restricts the development of flowing, ground hurling.

Dublin hurling, too, is in the ascendancy, as we learnt last Thursday on Sideline View - Network Two's new GAA magazine, presented by West Ham's fan, Dessie Cahill.

Now, for most GAA followers born in the last 30 years or so, the idea of 15 young, male, hurley-wielding Dubs conjures up images of a riot in O'Connell Street outside Rumours nightclub. Those days are gone though, as Marty Morrissey's report on Sideline View proved.

Marty was sent out on to the streets of Dublin to find a member of the team to explain how they had managed to remain unbeaten in their division two league campaign this season - and beat Cork along the way.

He waited and waited and waited at a bus stop in Crumlin. Finally, along came a bus and would you believe it, it was being driven by a Dublin hurler - Brian McMahon. Isn't life full of gas coincidences? (It was also worth noting that Marty didn't pay when he got on the bus, so look out for him on Crimeline next month.)

McMahon gave much of the credit for the team's success to manager Michael O'Grady, a native of Patrickswell in Limerick. O'Grady appears to be a disciple of Wexford guru Liam Griffin: "We've worked very hard on the actual psychological aspect of the play and on players' self-belief.

"We have them on a programme where they're supposed to listen to tapes, read certain manuals and every day they're supposed to take five minutes out to do a bit of what we call, visualisation," he added.

(Visualisation? Janie, it's a long way from visualisation the founding fathers of the GAA were reared). "This involves thinking about next Sunday's game, how they'll play, where they'll play, how they'll take the first ball when it comes to them - that's what they do, I believe, in sport across the world now."

The truth is, when most GAA fans close their eyes and try to "visualise" these days, all they see are the three dreaded words "pay-per-view". On Tuesday's RTE News, Tony O'Donoghue put the big question to GAA president Joe McDonagh - "Could Gaelic games some day become pay-per-view events?" Fair play to Joe, he dealt with the question head on.

"It's not for me to determine what will happen in the television industry itself and maybe RTE will come along to us at some time and will say to the public that this is how things are going and, you know, with the emergence of digital television, with the challenges that are there for the authorities who run the media in this country, certainly they may very well dictate to us, to organisations, to people who view, how these matters will emerge in the future," he said. Now, does that mean yes or no? Or both. Or neither. Answers on a postcard to Croke Park.

Mary Hannigan

Mary Hannigan

Mary Hannigan is a sports writer with The Irish Times